I Tatti Newsletter Autumn 2013

The Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies

VILLA I TATTI

Via di Vinci j

jliata 26, 50135

Florence, Italy

E-mail: info@itatti.harvard.edu

Volume 33
OS OS OS

Autumn 2013

Tel: +39 055 603 251 / Fax: +39 055 603 383

On a stormy day in March, Mrs
Wakaba Yashiro and her daughter
Toko Hirayama, Chief Curator at the
Hirayama Ikuo Silk Road Museum,
Japan, came to I Tatti. It was their
first visit to the Villa, and they were
accompanied by Professor Masanori
Aoyagi, distinguished archeologist of
ancient Rome and Greece and currently
Director of the National Museum of
Western Art in Tokyo. Mrs Yashiro is the
daughter-in-law ofYukio Yashiro (1890-
1975), who spent several years at I Tatti
in the 1920s, and after publishing in 1925
his monumental three volume study
of Sandro Botticelli with the Medici
Society in London, went on to become
a major force in the establishment of art
history in Japan. From 1924 to 1958 he
entertained a regular, most interesting
correspondence with Berenson, which
we are planning to publish online soon.

The two gentle, elegant ladies came
bearing multiple gifts and a magnificent
bouquet of flowers. They are devoted
to the memory of Yashiro, whom they
call YY; they spoke warmly about the
transformative and lasting influence
that his friendship with Berenson had
on him. We showed them our Asian
collection, introduced them to some
of our Fellows and conversed happily
over lunch. Later we accompanied
them to the chapel where BB and Mary
Berenson are buried. Here, kneeling
down next to BB's grave, after arranging
her gorgeous bouquet on a diagonal
line just below his name, Mrs Yashiro
stayed awhile in quiet contemplation. I
realized then that mother and daughter
had not come to I Tatti all the way from
Japan for our Library, our art collection,
or our gardens; they had come for BB,
to pay their respects to the memory of
a man who, as Mrs Yashiro said, meant
so much in Yashiro 's life, and through
Yashiro touched the lives of everyone
who lived in his family and beyond.

Letter from Florence

Mrs Yashiro had come from Japan on a
pilgrimage to fulfill a vow she had made
when her father-in-law died in 1975.

When two months later Anna and
I, together with Jonathan Nelson and
his wife Silvia, traveled to meet with
the community of Renaissance scholars
in Japan, we naturally returned Mrs
Yashiro's visit. Accompanied by Toko
Hirayama and Koichi Toyama, Professor
of History of Art at Keio University, we
visited her in Kamakura, a lovely small
city, one hour's ride south of Tokyo,
once seat of the Shogunate and capital
of Japan. It was a warm, bright day, and
Mrs Yashiro gave us the friendhest of
welcomes, treating us to a visit of the
huge and handsome Amida Buddha,
and then to a sumptuous luncheon in
traditional Japanese style in the house of
the minister and keeper of the shrine.
In the afternoon, she took us to see
the Kamakura Museum of National
Treasures, where some of the ancient

capital's great mementos are preserved.
It was fascinating for us to see the
remarkable statues, paintings, scrolls
and artifacts that Japanese artists were
producing in Kamakura while ten
thousand kilometers away, in Florence,
the Rinascimento was taking shape.
Later, we visited the Library of the
Museum of Modern Art in Hayama,
where Yashiro's papers and books are
kept, including all the letters that BB
sent to him from Settignano. As we
looked at the letters and books that
connected YY and BB all those years
ago, I felt very moved by what their
friendship and correspondence had
meant to them. But I was also struck
by what it meant, and still means, in a
broader context, to the study of art and
the humanities, as I Tatti welcomes its
first Fellows from the East: the immense
potential of the humanistic bond to
unite people beyond their geographic,
linguistic, and cultural differences.
<sw as* as
But apart from this memorable
trip to Japan, this year there were other,
equally enriching experiences much
nearer home. The Fellows themselves
organized two major trips. In December
we went to Bologna and in April to
Siena. Having probably never been on
a trip with I Tatti Fellows, you may be
forgiven for thinking that the adjective
"major" is somewhat of an exaggeration
for trips that took us no more than one
hour's travel from Settignano. In fact,
in and around Siena and Bologna, we
saw things as astonishing as the Great
Buddha of Kamakura. To mention
only a few examples, in Bologna we
were treated to an exceptionally close
encounter with the statues and bas-
reliefs with which the Sienese Jacopo
della Quercia adorned the unfinished
facade of San Petronio. The day was

Continued on page 2.

Cambridge Office: Villa I Tatti, Harvard University, 124 Mt. Auburn Street, Cambridge, MA 02 138-5762
Tel: +1 617 496 8724 or +1 617 495 8042 / Fax: +1 617 495 8041 / Web: http://www.itatti.harvard.edu

VILLA I TATTI COMMUNITY 2012-2013

Full information on the 37 scholars making up the 2012-2013 academic community can be found under COMMUNITY,
FORMER APPOINTEES, 2012/2013 on our website at www.itatti.harvard.edu. Click on their names for further details.

2

Nadja Aksamija, Ingrid Baumgartner, Andrew Berns, Eve Borsook, Julian Brooks,
Christopher Brown, Giancarlo Casale, Evelien Chayes, Gabriele Fattorini, Emanuela
Ferretti, Eric Gordon, Allen Grieco, Margaret Haines, Philippa Jackson, Ana Carolina Hosne,
Adam Jasienski, Eun-Sung Juliana Kang,
Victoria Kirkham, Valentina Lepri, Jun
Li, Chen Liu, Evan MacCarthy, Nicoletta
Marcelli, Stephen Milner, Mauro Minardi,
Sanam Nader-Esfahani, Alina Payne,
Monica Preti-Hamard, Alexandre Ragazzi,
Renee Raphael, Laura Refe, Jessica
Richardson, Michael Rocke, Marco Sgarbi,
Nicholas Terpstra, Min-Ling Tsai, Daniel
Zolli.

Continued from page 1.

grey and cold, and now and then a
snow flake or two floated in the air
on the empty piazza Maggiore. But
we donned hard hats and went high
up and across the scaffolding on the
facade of San Petronio, and behind
the sheets of plastic and the intricate
metal structures we shook hands with
both Jacopo's statues and the restorers

who were working on them. In the
enclosed space and under the spotlight,
Jacopo's Madonna and Child, which
Michelangelo describes as "the most
beautiful Madonna of the Quattrocento,"
seemed disturbingly alive and familiar.

When we caught the bus the
morning after,Bologna was covered with
a layer of snow, and, it being Saturday,
the city was completely deserted. In no

time at all the bus took us out of the city
and into the flat country north east of
Bologna. A little fog hung in the air, and
over the limitless white plain all shapes
seemed unreal — the isolated farms,
the straight hnes of poplars, the small
side roads going off into the distance.

From somewhere in this plain, as it
started snowing again, a castle emerged
with four towers and a moat around it.
The castle of San Martino in Soverzano,
a jewel of a building in a perfect state of
conservation, was indeed our destination.
Built in 1411 by the Bolognese Knight
Bartolomeo Manzoli where the ancient
tower of the Ariosti stood, it is now the
property of Dr. Michelangelo Poletti, a
local entrepreneur and generous patron
of the arts. As we got out of the bus
and approached the castle on foot, the
drawbridge was lowered and out came
our host greeting us with a warm smile
and urging us in and out of the snow.
He led all twenty of us quickly through
the inner courtyard and into a spacious,
softly-lit drawing room, where, by a
roaring open fire, hot coffee and biscuits
were awaiting. Once warmed and
restored, Dr Poletti personally guided

us through the corridors and rooms
of his home showing us with pleasure
and pride his impressive collection of
16th and 17th century paintings and
precious furniture. And as we reached
the dining room, an elegant long table
with refreshments and wine ready for
our enjoyment appeared by another
open fire. Oh gran bonta de' cavalieri
antiqui! We were ecstatic — fellows,
professors and director all equally
caught by the magic of the place.
as as as
Though spring this year was slow
and late coming even to Tuscany, Siena
greeted us with glorious sunshine.
I will single out only two of the
exceptional treasures we admired there:
the biccherne in the Archivio di Stato
and the "crypt" in the Duomo. The
Biccherna was, from the 12th to the
18th century, the chief financial office
of the Sienese government. From the
13th century the name was extended to
designate the small, wooden panels used
to cover the office registers. Initially,
the covers portrayed the officer in
charge seated at his desk and holding
the register in his hands. Later, however,

Villa I Tatti

Continued from page 2.

they were otten devoted to religious
subjects, or to the recording of great
historical events in the life of the city:
major battles, crowning of popes, natural
catastrophes, and so on. But apart from
their extraordinary documentary value,
these panels are astonishing, beautifully
preserved works of art, a feast for the eye,
that have recently allowed art historians
to give names and identities to some of
the artists active in Siena before Duccio.
The Victoria and Albert Museum
rightly makes a great deal of its one
biccherna, dated 1402; Siena has 105
dating from 1258 to early 18th century,
and signed among others by Ambrogio
Lorenzetti, Sano di Pietro, Francesco
di Giorgio, and Domenico Beccafumi.

The other Sienese treasure I must
mention is the
virtually unknown,
stunning "crypt"
under the Duomo.
Painted by Sienese
artists of the second
half of the XIII
century, its frescos
are a joy to behold.
Having been kept
in darkness for seven
centuries, these
religious works,
depicting scenes
from the Old and
the New Testaments,
display incredibly
fresh and vivid
colors: the bright
blue, the red, the
yellow eloquently
bespeak the glory
that we are missing
when we look at the
13th- 14th century
Tuscan paintings
generally available
in churches and
museums. Piil ridon
le carte indeed — I
can't imagine a
better way of describing the difference.

The day after, not wanting to be
second to anyone, our Sienese guides
took us out in the country. Six cars full
of Tattiani drove in brilliant sunshine
towards the Crete Senesi, and when,
having reached a green plateau in the
middle of nowhere, we really thought
we had lost our way, we saw in the
distance a castle with five powerful red

towers, standing solitary between blue
sky and green meadows. We left our
cars and walked to it. There was no
one there to greet us,
nor fresh lemonade
and biscuits to restore
us after the hot drive,
but, magically, all gates,
doors, and windows
were open just for
us, all rooms ready
for our exploration.
And in we went, to
discover a magnificent
collection of mainly
Sienese paintings and sculptures
going back to the 13th century, and
including splendid examples of works
by Bartolomeo Bulgarini, Simone
Martini, Pietro Lorenzetti, and
Taddeo and Andrea di Bartolo.
The severe beauty of the castle
was a perfect setting for the art
that it housed, reminding us of
its original goal: the intimate
connection between art and
the hfe of the soul. This too
was then a magic castle,
though it actually exists in the
Asciano's territory under the
name of Gallico, and it is my
pleasure to record here the
name of its owner, Mr Salini,
who graciously and generously
allowed us to visit it. When we
had seen
everything
to our
heart's
content,
we went
out in the
sunshine
The

July 21st saw the conclusion of
I Tatti's first ever Summer Seminar.
Generously funded by the Getty
Foundation, the
Seminar was attended
by eighteen Chinese
professors who
teach Western Art
in thirteen different
universities in China.
For three weeks,
under the guidance
of Jonathan Nelson
and some I Tatti
Fellows, our Chinese
seminarists visited museums, churches,
and other monuments in Florence and
nearby, and attended special lectures and
open discussions in the Gould Hall at
I Tatti. By all accounts, the seminar was
a great success. One of the scholars, a
woman in her mid-thirties who teaches
at a small provincial college not far
from Shanghai, told me that she had
never been outside China before. She
was enchanted with what she saw in
Florence and elsewhere in Italy, but
she was also intellectually stimulated
and emotionally enriched by what she
studied, the lectures she was attending,
the conversations she was having with
her colleagues, the professors, and the
Fellows. As she was describing her
feelings, tears came welling up to her
eyes. Why was she weeping, I enquired.
She was weeping with joy, she said,
at the thought of going back home
and sharing with her students all that
she had seen, heard and read in Italy.
Thus, I thought, almost one hundred
years later, Yashiro's story continues
in another country, another world.

~ Lino Pertile
Director

Anna Bensted & Lino Pertile.

Mary Gibbons Landor with
Andrew herns.

again
fresh

grass

Anna Bensted, Wakaba Yashiro, Lino Pertile,
Toko Hirayama, Masaitori Aoyagi & Jonathan Nelson.

around the castle was dotted
with daisies. Anna thought it
was a perfect spot for a picnic,
had we only brought adequate
provisions. But since we hadn't,
we turned our cars around and
drove to Pienza: not a bad spot for
a bunch of Italian Renaissance
scholars to have lunch.

Second semester appointees Alina Payne, Daniel Zolli,
Evelien Chayes, Nick Terpstra, Alexandre Ragazzi
& Christopher Brown.

Autumn 2013

DO THE BIBLIOTECA BERENSON CS

Mbvimentato — eventful or busy
- is the Italian word that leaps
out and wants to impose itself on
my mind as I reflect on the life and
activities of the Biblioteca Berenson
over the past year. It has been an
action-filled and demanding yet
stimulating period, as we brought to
conclusion several large or multi-year
projects, began some exciting new
collaborative ventures, introduced
several technological innovations,
and underwent unusually high staff
turnover and re-organization.

Among the completed projects,
first, in a joint initiative with the Fine
Arts Library at Harvard, records for
our complementary collections of
art auction catalogs were imported
into the HOLLIS catalog from
the external databases where they
previously resided. Records for 14,000
catalogs held by the Berenson Library
and 45,000 by the Fine Arts Library now
display in HOLLIS, making Harvard's
substantial combined corpus of catalogs
more easily discoverable. Our catalogs
include some 2,500 items that belonged
to Bernard Berenson, some quite rare
and many of them uniquely bearing his
and Mary's annotations.

Second, we concluded the cata-
loging and digitization of some 1,800
personal photographs of the Berensons'
family and friends, held among their Pa-
pers in the his- |
torical archive.
By early fall the
image files will
be deposited in
the Digital Re-
pository Service
at Harvard and,
except where
copyright re-
strictions apply,
will display in

the VIA and HOLLIS catalogs. These
photographs provide a wealth of little-
known visual documentation about the
Berensons and a wide range of their
friends and associates, including such
persons of note as Walt Whitman, Ga-
briele d'Annunzio, William James, Edith

Sanam Nader-Esfahani & Valentina Lepri

A small exhibition was mounted in the Berenson Reading
Room (aka the Big Library) this year showing ten of the most
extraordinary modern facsimiles of medieval and Renaissance
manuscripts in the Library's collections. They included such
famous examples of 15th century Italian book illumination as the
Bible oj Borso d'Este and the Book of Hours of Alfonso I d'Este,
a rare Hebrew manuscript (the Rothschild Miscellany) produced
in northern Italy, and several remarkable music manuscripts from
Spain, France, and the Netherlands.

Wharton, Geoffrey Scott, Benedetto
Croce, Katherine Dunham, King Gus-
tafVI Adolf of Sweden, Count Vittorio
Cini, and many others.

Finally, it gives me great pleasure
to announce that we have completed
the multi-year initiative to catalog and
digitize the photo archive's images of
"Homeless Paintings of the Italian
Renaissance," that is, works of art
whose current location or repository
is unknown. Altogether over 16,000
photographs have been cataloged and
scanned, representing more than 1 1 ,000
artworks from the 13th to the 17th
^ centuries — mainly
paintings, but many
drawings too. Some of
these works have been
I destroyed in wars or
natural disasters, some
have been stolen, and
others — probably most
— belong to unknown
art dealers or private
collectors. Whatever
their fate, they are
essentially lost to public view as well as
to scholarly study, except in many cases
through the rare visual documentation
preserved in the photo archive of the
Berenson Library. The images and texts
describing them are now fully available
in Harvard's VIA and HOLLIS catalogs.

Two new and promising
collaborative initiatives with other
institutions or groups stem directly
or in large part from the Homeless
Paintings project. First, we have
partnered with metaLAB (at) Harvard,
a unit devoted to digital humanities,
to create a dynamic, interactive
web platform to host the corpus of
"Homeless Paintings of the Italian
Renaissance," as an alternative to the
static VIA system. Based in part on
crowd-sourcing technologies, this
innovative discovery system will
provide students, teachers, scholars,
and collectors with an exciting
new tool for learning, teaching,
and research. Financial support for
this joint project has been received
from the De Bosis Fund at Harvard
(including support for a course on
the project this fall at Harvard) and
from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation.
A beta version of the database and new
website is expected by autumn 2013,
with a planned weeklong workshop on
crowd-sourcing and "lost" collections
scheduled for the J-term at Harvard in
January 2014. We hope that this new
discovery platform might serve as a
model for other similar "lost" collections.
(For more on this project, see http://
metalab. harvard, edu/proj ects/ .)

The other collaboration —
prompted in part by the photo
archive's new digital profile through
the "Homeless Paintings" project —
has only recently begun, but it too
holds great promise. In January, I had
the honor of joining representatives
of thirteen European and American
libraries and research institutes with
major historical photograph archives
in a two-day colloquium in New York
City devoted to "Photo Archives and
the Digital Future." Sponsored by the
Samuel H. Kress Foundation, and jointly
organized by the Frick Art Reference
Library, the Getty Research Institute,
the Courtauld Institute of Art, and the
Yale Center for British Art, the purpose
of the colloquium was to discuss and
elaborate long-range strategies for
collaboration among these repositories

Villa I Tatti

and for facilitating digital access to their
important collections. The ambitious
goal that the participants set for this
fledgling association — currently called
the International Digital Photo Archive
Initiative — is to create a new tool for
research on works
of art by providing
comprehensive access
to the consolidated
collections of photo
archives, based on
a linked open data
model. At the outset
this would give access
to more than 31 million
images possessed by the
repositories represented
at the colloquium
alone, with more to
be brought into the
project as it develops.
At the colloquium,
well-defined short-
term collaborative projects among small
groups of these archives were identified
as test cases, and further meetings to
move the process along have been
scheduled for the coming year. This
exciting new initiative promises to
make a major impact on the nature of
image research in the future.

Another fruitful collaboration
involved a newly instituted staff
exchange program between I Tatti
and Dumbarton Oaks in Washington,
D.C. that provides up to a week of
administrative leave "to travel to the
sister institution in order to further
an institutional goal, or to engage
in collaboration with one or more
departments at the host institution."
Kicking off the program, we had the
great pleasure of hosting two members
of the DO staff, both associated with

Silvia Catitti, Jonathan Nelson
& Alexandra Provo.

Laura Refe & Juliana Kang.

archives. James Carder, Archivist and
House Collection Manager, came in
May to conduct research on Bernard
and Mary Berenson's letters for his
ongoing study of the correspondence
between Robert and Mildred Bliss and
Royall and Elisina Tyler,
which will eventually
be published on the
Dumbarton Oaks
website (for more on
this project, see http://
www. doaks . org/library-
archives/ dumbarton-
oaks-archives/bliss-
tyler) . In June it was the
turn of Shalimar Fojas
White, Manager of the
Image Collections and
Fieldwork Archives.
Shalimar spent five
packed days in animated
meetings with library
staff members and
others, focusing in particular on the
photograph and historical archives
and their different inventorying,
cataloging, and digital projects, while
also sharing with us information about
the wonderful work she and her team
are doing at DO. It turned out to be
an inspirational visit for us all, and
produced a raft of ideas about how
our two institutions might collaborate
together on projects in the future. With
the visits of James and Shalimar, the new
staff exchange program could not have
gotten off to a more promising start.

Thanks to the IT savvy of new staff
member Lukas Klic, we introduced two
new technological innovations this year
that will have a significant impact on
library workflows and patron services.
As an alternative to librarian-assisted
loan procedures, Lukas developed an
easy-to-use automated self-checkout
system (at right) that allows patrons to
charge books out independently (as
always, for on-site use only). This is
especially useful to current and former
appointees who wish to borrow books
outside of public hours when no library
staff are present to assist them. It also
relieves the librarian at the reference
desk of this small but cumulatively
time-consuming task.

Continued on page 6.

In January, I Tatti launched its
own Facebook page.
You don't need a Facebook
account to check it out - you
can just go to www.facebook.
com/villaitatti - but if you'd like
to receive our updates - and
post your own - you do need an
account and need to "like" us.

Each week we post updates
about I Tatti and news relevant
to Renaissance studies that
is somehow connected with
I Tatti. We also encourage you
to add your own posts, perhaps
about your latest book, recent
promotion or award, or about an
article or conference you think
others might find interesting.

To date, more than 1,500
people around the world, curious
about the Italian Renaissance,
have already "liked" us. Why
don't you?

Q_D 1-1 Q-D

55 Former 55
Fellows' Update

The I Tatti Newsletter no longer
contains news about former Fellows
and other appointees. More timely
information is posted on Facebook
when we hear of it and feel free
to post your own news on our
Facebook page. Keep in touch!

Autumn 2013

Continued from page 5.

Secondly, to streamline and
better control the book acquisitions
process from beginning to end, we
have developed an automated, web-
based, purchase request management
system. All requests from readers or
appointees, and all selections by staff
involved in collection development,
are now entered in an online database.
Before the request is submitted, the
application quickly performs a search in
bothWorldcat and the HOLLIS catalog.
If it locates a record for the item, it
automatically populates the form with
the appropriate bibliographic data, warns
the acquisitions staff if this is a duplicate
request or if our library already holds
the book, and flags items marked urgent
for priority handling. Once registered
in the database, requested items are
systematically tracked through the
approval and ordering process, ensuring
that none of the thousands of items that
are requested every year is inadvertently
overlooked or neglected. The new
system represents a major improvement
in the library's collection development
and acquisitions procedures.

The Berenson Library also began
participating this year in Harvard's Scan
& Deliver service, a free, electronic
document delivery service for the

Emanuela Ferretti with Mara Zepeda,
& Peggy Haines.

Harvard community that makes millions
of items accessible to university-wide
users. We have made available some
41,000 items that, within the broader
system, are held uniquely at I Tatti. In
part we hope to reciprocate for the
heavy use of this excellent service by
I Tatti's appointees to quickly obtain
resources held in Harvard hbraries
nearly 4,000 miles from Florence.

Finally, this year has also seen
new developments and a good deal of
turnover, unusually, in
the library's personnel.
With the end of the
long Homeless Paintings
project, we converted the
temporary contracts of
the two most experienced
of the team of photo
catalogers — Elena Stolfi
and Sanne Wellen — into
long-term contracts,
an expression of our
commitment to continue
opening up access to the
photo archive's riches
through an ongoing,
routine program of
cataloging and scanning.
Another wonderful
member of this team — Alexandra Provo
— left us at the end of June to begin a
dual Master's program in Art History
and Library and Information Science at
the Pratt Institute in New York. We also
replaced a library assistant on temporary
contract with a new long-term staff
member — Spyros Koulouris — whose
responsibilities include various support
functions in both the library and the
photo archive.

Also, in a major reshuffling for
our technical services team in the
library, two key colleagues accepted
positions elsewhere this year: Manuela
Michelloni (began 2000, acquisitions
librarian since 2005) has moved to
Rome to become Librarian at the
Norwegian Institute, and Scott Palmer
(began 2006, serials hbrarian since
2007, with added responsibilities for
digital initiatives in 2012) has gone to
New York University's Villa La Pietra
to take up the position of Coordinator
of Instructional Technology and Digital
Initiatives. I take this opportunity
to acknowledge their outstanding
contributions to the library, and more —
Scott, in particular, among other things
skillfully managed the development of
our website in 201 1 and was for years the
library's IT specialist. I would also like
to heartily thank Lukas Klic for taking
on the duties of acquisitions librarian ad
interim while a search for a permanent
replacement was conducted, a task he

Chen

performed with uncommon ability and
terrific results. Lukas 's position has also
been made permanent,
with the new title of
Librarian for Infor-
mation Services and
Digital Initiatives.

I'm very pleased
to report that we
have just hired two
highly qualified young
librarians to assume
the responsibilities of
serials management
and acquisitions, both
of whom will take up
their positions in the
early autumn of 2013.
Paris O'Donnell,
with a PhD (2008)
in Medieval and
Renaissance Literature from Trinity
College, University of Dublin, and
an MLIS (2011) from the University
College London, conies to us with
several years' experience as a cataloger
at the British Library and at Balliol
College Library at Oxford University,
in addition to six months' of part-time
work here in the Berenson Library this
year. She becomes our new Serials and
Continuing Resources Librarian. Our
new Acquisitions Librarian, Jocelyn
Karlan holds a BA in English from
Earlham College (2002) and an MLS
from Indiana University (2011), and
has worked as serials accounts manager
at Purdue University and as a librarian
at Colby College and the University
of Houston. With all of these fine
appointments, we continue to build a
strong team of librarians to help move
the Berenson Library forward over the
coming years.

My thanks to everyone on the li-
brary staff for their varied contributions
that have made this one such a produc-
tive and stimulating year!

~ Michael Rocke
Nicky Mariano Librarian and Director
of the Biblioteca Berenson

OS

Villa I Tatti

News from the Berenson Fototeca & Collection

/

This year was important for
acquisitions, including a number
of traditional (analog) photographs,
which are hard to obtain these days
since the digital
revolution. We
thank Treacy
and Darcy
Beyer for the
beautiful color
prints of the
digital images
of Giotto's
mural paintings
in the Peruzzi
Chapel in
Santa Croce, taken by Annette T. Keller
for the Opificio delle Pietre Dure,
as well as the 630 black and white
prints of lesser known Renaissance
artworks taken by the Roman
photographer Roberto Sigismondi.

Other wonderful gifts come from
three major figures in the history
of I Tatti. Luisa Vertova was Mr.
Berenson's assistant for a decade starting
in 1945. She has generously given us
the first installment of her personal
photograph study archive — notes,
clippings, offprints, and significantly 880
photographs, mostly of Renaissance and
Baroque paintings and drawings on the
art market or in private collections, as

Mr. Berenson as editor of the illustrated
Phaidon edition of his Florentine "lists"
and became the first librarian of the
Biblioteca Berenson under Harvard's
aegis. He recently donated 937 beautiful
photographs of Italian Renaissance

Looking at Donald Campbell's pictures
in the loggiato.

well as important material documenting
the research of her husband, Benedict
Nicolson, the famous specialist of the
Caravaggesque movement. Michael
Rinehart began his career working for

paintings and drawings. Sadly,
Gabriele Geier, who was a frequent
visitor to and generous friend of I
I Tatti from the 1950s on, died in
January (see page 24). Her generous
legacy includes a group of fascinating
photograph albums recording her
and Paul Geier's many travels. Our
heartfelt thanks go to them all.

The great news for this year
is certainly the completion of the
Homeless Paintings project: all the
images and relevant catalog entries are
now available online through Harvard's
Visual Information Access (VIA) (see
Michael Rocke's report on page 4). I
would particularly like to thank
Alexandra Provo who worked for
18 months on the project before
returning to the US this June.
Her professional skills, dedication,
and extraordinary human
qualities were fundamental
especially during the crucial
final phase of the project.

Three temporary staff
members joined the Fototeca full
time this year: Elena Stolfi, Sanne
Wellen, and Spyros Koulouris
(see Michael Rocke's report
on page 6). We are delighted to have
their expertise and cheerful disposition
at work in the Fototeca. We are also
grateful for the help from numerous
interns — Alexandra C. French, Grace

Gahagan, Amelia Brown, and Kevin
Benz, all from Syracuse University, and
Roberta Castelli from University of
Florence — and our generous friends
Treacy and Darcy Beyer, Anchise
Tempestini, renowned expert of the
Venetian school, and Monica
Roman. As ever, special thanks go
to Eve Borsook for her constant
commitment in the Fototeca.

In June, the visit of Shalimar
White, Manager, Image Collections
and Fieldwork Archives at
Dumbarton Oaks, was an
extraordinary and fruitful chance
to exchange ideas about procedures,

Gabriele Fattorini, Laura Refe, Valentina Lepri
& Nicoletta Marcelli.

conservation problems, and collections,
and also to explore future collaborations.

As for the Art Collection, Roberto
Bellucci (Opificio delle Pietre Dure)
has completed the surface cleaning of
the paintings which allowed us to finish
the digital photography campaign of
I Tatti's artworks. These images, by
Paolo De Rocco (Centrica), are being
processed in order to be cataloged
and eventually published online along
with the historical photographs as
part of Melvin R. Sieden project (see
http:/ /itatti. harvard.edu/i-tatti/ art-
collection/ online-catalog-berenson-
art-collection-memory-melvin-r-
seiden), our ongoing cataloging projects.

~ Giovanni Pagliarulo
Agnes Mongan Curator of the
Berenson Fototeca
Curator of the Berenson
Art Collection

7

Autumn 2013

so

NEWS
FROM THE
MORRILL MUSIC
LIBRARY

The Morrill Music Library is proud
to announce a new acquisition of
notable significance: a volume of fifteen
Canto partbooks, which are bound
together in an English binding of the
early seventeenth century carrying
the Tudor rose on the front and back.
This fascinating item contains mostly
Italian madrigals and motets, almost
all published between 1603 and 1606
(a notable exception is the anthology
La Gloria musicale, printed in 1592).

<:anto:-

•PRIMOS.

Of the contents, all very rare,
seven partbooks are unique: Canzoni
by Lorenzo de' Medici, madrigals by
Benedetto Pallavicino, Marc'Antonio
Ingegneri and Francesco Terriera;
motets by Simone Molinaro; masses by
Giovanni Croce and Laude spirituali by
Bartolomeo Favretti. Of these seven,
the Canto of Favretti 's Laude completes
three other parts held in the Biblioteca
Vallicelliana in Rome, while the Canzoni
of Medici, the Sesto libro de madrigali by
Ingegneri, the Secondo libro de madrigali
by Terriera, and the Prima libro de motetti
a cinque by Molinaro comprise the single
surviving sources for those publications.

We acquired this volume in the
auction held by Sotheby's Paris of the

extraordinary music collection of
bibliophile Andre Meyer (1884-
1974), the most important sale of
printed music for over a century.
The numerous rarities in the sale
attracted international attention, |
and record prices were achieved.
Bidding for our lot by telephone,
with lively competition in the

hall, was

unique experience

This year began with our yearly
keyboard Masterclass, which offers
to talented young musicians a week's
course performing on historic keyboard
instruments in Tuscany, under the expert
guidance of Professor Ella Sevskaya.The
Masterclass began as a collaboration
with the State Conservatory of
Moscow to assist Russian students who
rarely have the opportunity of playing
on historic instruments in their own
country. Now in its eighth year, it has
been extended to other countries, and
we were delighted to welcome this year
two musicians from Japan. Participants
of the course were Julia Kuznetsova
(Moscow State Conservatory), Olga
Pashchenko (a graduate of the Moscow
State Conservatory, now studying at the
Conservatoriuni van Amsterdam), Irina
Potemkina (University of St. Petersburg) ,
Mayuko Kamishiraishi and Kozue
Kinoshita (both from the Hochschule
fur Musik Franz Liszt, Weimar).

The students worked for the
week in the Museo degli strumenti
of the Galleria dell'Accademia on a
copy of the oval spinet by Bartolomeo
Cristofori (1690) made by Kerstin
Schwarz and Tony Chinnery; a copy
of the ebony harpsichord attributed to
Cristofori (ca. 1698- 1700); and a copy
of his fortepiano of 1726, both made
by Kerstin Schwarz. The Laboratorio
di Restauro del Fortepiano of Florence
kindly made available a fortepiano
made in London by Joseph Kirknian
in 1800, and a Johann Schantz made
in Vienna ca.1810-1815. The study
week concluded with a concert in the
Limonaia, where they performed on
Villa I Tatti's own harpsichord, a fine
copy by Ugo Casiglia of a Giovanni
Battista Giusti of 1695, commissioned
and donated by former Fellow Frederick
Hammond (VIT'72). The participants
performed for us Renaissance and

Lino with the Masterclass participants.

Baroque keyboard music by Spanish,
English, Italian, Flemish and German
composers. An unusual item was the
sonata played by Irina Potemkina
by the Pistoiese composer Vincenzo
Manfredini, who worked for over nine
years at the Imperial court of Russia.

Irina Potemkina performs on I Tatti's harpsichord,
donated by former Fellow Frederick Hammond.

The manuscript of this sonata was
discovered by Irina in the archives in
St. Petersburg; her performance was
a rare occasion to hear music by this
interesting Tuscan composer who
took the Italian style to Russia. Olga
Pashchenko concluded the concert with
the formidably difficult Fantasia cromatica
by Sweelinck.We take this occasion to
extend our congratulations to Olga,
who during 2012 won the Premio
Ferrari of the International Fortepiano
Competition, Rovereto, took Second
Prize and the Audience Prize in the
Bruges Harpsichord Competition,
and First Prize and the Chopin Prize
in the International Hans von Billow
Piano competition. Olga has followed
I Tatti's Masterclass since its inception
eight years ago; we are delighted
that many of our students return
annually for this event in September.

~ Kathryn Bosi
Morrill Music Librarian

Villa I Tatti

000 Musician in Residence 000

Erin Headley joined us from the
University of Southampton as
I Tatti's Musician in Residence

last spring. She is an internationally
acclaimed viola da gamba player, and
the world's leading exponent of that
enigmatic instrument called the lirone,
which she has revived single-handedly.
The lira da braccio, a bowed instrument
with seven strings, evolved in Italy in the
early fifteenth century to accompany
humanist improvised music and poetry,
and became immensely popular in
the northern Italian
city-states such as
Florence, Ferrara,
Mantua, Venice and
Milan. For Marsilio
Ficino, the eminent
philosopher and
classicist at the court
of Cosimo di Medici,
performing on the
lira da braccio was a
meditative exercise —
even therapeutic — which could invoke,
through the Dorian mode, the presence
of Apollo, who presided over the
power of music and poetry. Amongst

the known players of
the lira da braccio were
Leonardo da Vinci and his
student Atalante Migliorotti
who, it seems, travelled
as a duo participating in
improvisation contests
throughout Italy. The
same Atalante wrote to
Francesco Gonzaga in
1505 that he had invented
and constructed a "new
kind of lira, larger and
with twelve strings...". His
lirone was a remarkable multi-string
bowed instrument
which could, in
fact, have from
nine to twenty
strings. A nearly
flat bridge made
it possible to play
four or more
strings together,
which according
to Migliorotti
could provide
"pure and consummate harmony".
The lirone remained popular as a
continuo instrument for another two
hundred years and, perhaps because of

its ability to provide such
a wonderfully sonorous
harmonic support, became
particularly associated
with the performance
of the popular genre
of secular and sacred
laments in seventeenth-
century Rome. Erin's
work reconstructing
this instrument began
thirty years ago and has
culminated in a number
of concert performances,
recordings, masterclasses, lectures and
published articles, to ensure that the
lirone and its Italian repertoire will
flourish again as it did in the seventeenth
century. Her ensemble Atalante, named
after the inventor of the instrument,
promotes the repertoire of the lirone
related to the seventeenth-century
lament. We Tattiani were privileged
to see and hear the immensely moving
video recordings of Roman laments by
Carissimi, Rossi, Mazzocchi, Marazzoli,
Pasquini and Stradella, which Erin's
ensemble has recently produced.

~ Kathryn Bosi
Morrill Music Librarian

I Lila Acheson Wallace - Reader's Digest
[Special Grant Recipients 2012-2013

Former I Tatti Appointees are eligible to apply for two kinds of grants to promote their scholarship. Full details can K
be found at www.itatti.harvard.edu/research/grants. The application deadline is 1 November each year.

> • The LILA WALLACE - READER'S DIGEST SPECIAL PROJECT GRANT provides support for interdisciplinary <

> projects in the Italian Renaissance, such as a conference, course, seminar, or lecture. <

> • The LILA WALLACE - READER'S DIGEST PUBLICATIONS SUBSIDY provides grants for scholarly books on <

> the Italian Renaissance.

* Donal Cooper (VIT'lO) and Janet Robson (VIT'll) towards the publication The Making of Assist: the Pope, the

> Franciscans, and the Painting of the Basilica. (Yale University Press). <

> Roisin Cossar (VIT'12), Filippo DeVivo (VIT'12) and Christina Neilson (VIT'12), towards the conference Cultural*

> Encounters and Shared Spaces in the Renaissance City, 1300-1700 to be held in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, September <

> 2014 in memory of Shona Kelly Wray (VIT'12).

Muan Luis GonzAlez Garcia (VITT2) and Miguel Falomir Faus, Museo del Prado, towards the conference Artistic Relations <

> Between Spain and Italy in the Renaissance: New Approaches to be held in Centro de Estudios del Museo del Prado, December <
>2013. <

> Meredith J. Gill (VIT'02) towards the publication Angels and the Order of Heaven in Medieval and Renaissance Italy.

* (Cambridge University Press) . <

> Megan Holmes (VIT'97) towards the publication The Miraculous Image in Renaissance Florence. (Yale University Press). <

Autumn 2013

10

Music at
I Tatti

The 2012-13 year featured two
very fine concert programs in the
Myron and Sheila Gilniore Limonaia
as part of the Early Music at I Tatti
series (concerts XXI & XXII), curated

Constantinople performs Early Dreams.

by Kathryn Bosi. These two programs
spanned the world, one celebrating the
music and literature of the Florentine
Trecento and the other offering musical
settings of poetry from the Mexican
Baroque.

On 11 October 2012, under the
direction of Kiya Tabassian, the group
Constantinople performed a program
entitled Early Dreams for voice, Baroque
guitar, Persian setar, viola da gamba,
and percussion. The concert united the

poetry of the Mexican
nun Sor Juana Ines de
la Cruz (1648-1695)
with musical works by
Spanish composers that
circulated in 17th- and
18th-century Mexico.
Sung by the featured soloist Francoise
Atlan, the settings of verses of Sor Juana

Iwere interspersed with a
selection of instrumental
dances by the likes of
Caspar Sanz (c. 1640 — c.
1710), Santiago de Murcia
_ (c. 1682 - c. 1740), and
Lucas Ruis de Ribayaz
(c. 1612 - c. 1667). This
inventive merging of
contemporaneous Spa-
nish music and New
World poetry together
with diverse instruments
made for a stimulating
performance that allowed
for reflection on the life and writings
of an extraordinary scholar, mystic, and
poet.

Ensemble Micrologus commemorated the seventh centenary
of the birth of Giovanni Boccaccio.

and literature enjoyed by a typical
Florentine brigata. With voices, strings,
organ, percussion, and dance, Ensemble
Micrologus recreated the spirit of such
a literary circle with seamless musical
programming and a dramatic flair that
included inviting audience members
to join in their dancing. Inspired by
anecdotal references to verses and
musical settings found in Boccaccio's
Decameron and elsewhere, the program
featured ballate and madrigale of
Francesco degli Organi, Gherardello
da Firenze, Donato da Firenze, and
Niccolo da Perugia, as well as popular
dances and contrafacta from other
Trecento ballate. The festive evening of
music, dance, and poetry among friends
was a most fitting tribute to Boccaccio
and his contemporaries.

~ Evan A. MacCarthy
CRIA Fellow

Kiya Tabassian.

Goffredo Degli Esposti.

On 13 June 2013, Ensemble
Micrologus commemorated the seven-
hundredth anniversary of Boccaccio's
birth with an evening entitled Canti di
una brigata fiorentina: trattenimenti musicali
nella novellistica toscana del Trecento.
Organized under the artistic direction
of Francesco Zimei (VIT'12), this
concert was intended as an "insider's
look" into the private world of music

Evan A. MacCarthy.

Villa I Tatti

The Berenson Lectures in the Italian Renaissance

Lina Bolzoni (VIT'93-'03)
Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa

Riti e piaceri delta letturafra Medioevo e Rinascimento: il dialogo con gli autori

I. L'incontro con i libri - amici da Petrarca all'Umanesimo

II. Lettura, identita, scrittura in Erasmo, Bembo, Machiavelli
III. II desiderio di vedere l'autore e i rischi dell'immaginazione

"I

can never tire of books," wrote
Petrarch, "because they disclose
worlds ancient and new waiting to be
explored." The primary focus of the
three Bernard Berenson Lectures, Riti e
piaceri delta lettura fra medioevo e rinasci-
mento: II dialogo con gli autori, delivered
by Lina Bolzoni (Pisa, Scuola Normale
Superiore) this fall, was the practice of

reading from Petrarch
to Tasso. Professor
Bolzoni showed what a marvelous expe-
rience reading was for Renaissance men
and women of letters, and explored the
rituals and pleasures of reading in an era
of profound social and cultural transfor-
mation. During this period, the book
was increasingly establishing itself as the
medium for the transmission of knowl-
edge and for the understanding of the
human condition. In her first lecture,
Bolzoni presented the very act of read-
ing as a dialogue between authors of
different epochs. Far from being a mere
formalistic exercise, reading is a dimen-
sion where readers construct images
of themselves and their world. "Virgil
will never say no. He will never ask
for money," according to Giovanni di

Pagolo Morelli (Florence 1371-1444).
He was confident that Virgil, through
his books, would always be there as a
trusted friend, willing to reveal all his
secrets. In this meeting between writer
and reader, what is dead comes alive in
written words and thoughts. Indeed,
Bolzoni highlighted how books defy
death itself by establishing bonds of
friendship beyond the barriers of time.
As Machiavelli wrote to Francesco
Vettori (1474-1539), in the famous let-
ter dated 10 December 1513, analyzed
by Bolzoni in her second lecture:

"When evening
conies, I return home
and enter my study ... I
step inside the venerable
courts of the ancients,
where, solicitously
received by them, I
nourish myself on that
food that alone is mine
and for which I was born;
where I am unashamed
to converse with them and to question
them . . . And for four hours at a time I
feel no boredom, I forget all my troubles
... I transfer myself into
them completely."

Reading offers an
ecstatic, even magical
experience in which
the reader temporarily
loses all sense of identity,
instead taking on the
thoughts of the author,
and later retrieving his
selfhood, deeply marked
by the encounter. Reading
becomes the means for
the self-construction of
identity, the mirror of the

Marco Sgarbi.
soul, and "the mirror will be mendacious
if it does not reflect a genuine picture
of the mind," as Erasmus wrote. But
reading, Bolzoni said, is the place of
truth: for Erasmus the "word" of the
Gospels brings us closer to Christ than
the Apostles themselves. Meanwhile, lest
reading fails to give a faithful picture of
the author, we need to reconstruct the
text philologicalfy in order to meet the
"true author." And turning to images,
in her last lecture, Bolzoni suggested
that the study of the experience of
reading can be extremely useful for
understanding Renaissance portraits.
Reading reveals a problematic dialogue
between a visualized external picture
and an internal image revealed by the
written text.

~ Marco Sgarbi
Jean-Francois Malle Fellow

11

Autumn 2013

Lectures & Programs

AM

12

with support from the Lila Wallace - Reader's Digest Endowment Fund and the Scholarly Programs and Publications Funds in
the names of Malcolm Hewitt Wiener, Craig and Barbara Smyth, Jean-Francois Malle, Andrew W. Mellon, and Robert Lehman.

Academic Events at I Tatti, 2012-2013

20 September, Screening & discussion: 1959 RAI show on BB

25 September, Visit to Villa La Pietra (NYU).

Lecture by Stephen Milner: "The Town Criers of Renaissance

Florence"

4 October, Berenson Lecture by Lina Bolzoni: "Riti e piaceri

della lettura fra Medioevo e Rinascimento: i\ dialogo con gli autori" I

(of III): L'incontro con i libri-amici da Petrarca all'Umanesimo

1 1 October, Concert: Early Music at I Tatti XXI: Early Dreams:

The World of Sor Juana de la Cruz, Constantinope

8 November, Fellows' Seminar: Corporate Patronage

Jessica Richardson: "Painting in Late-Medieval Bologna and

Francesco Cavazzoni's Miraculous Madonnas"

Mauro Minardi: "La committenza degli ordini mendicanti net

Montefeltro nelTrecento"

Gabriele Fattorini: "Arte per le arti: le committenze delle corpora-
zioni a Siena"

14 November, Visit to Kunsthistorisches Institut

15 November, Berenson Lecture by Lina Bolzoni: II: Lettura,
identita, scrittura in Erasmo, Bembo, Machiavelli

29 November, Fellows' Seminar: Foreign Exchange
Philippa Jackson: "Girolamo Ghinucci (1480-1541): Sienese cleric,
Roman judge, English diplomat"

Andrew Berns: "Hebrew Letters as Witness to Rural Medicine in
Renaissance Italy"

Giancarlo Casale: "Ottoman Humanism and the Mediterranean
Renaissance"

30 November, Visit to the Vasari Corridor led by Emanuela
Ferretti

6 December, Berenson Lecture by Lina Bolzoni: III: II desiderio
di vedere I'autore e i rischi dell'immaginazione
7-8 December - Fellows'Trip to Bologna led by Nadja Aksamija
and Jessica Richardson: Santo Stefano, Piazza Maggiore,
San Petronio, Museo di Palazzo Poggi, Museo Aldrovandi,
Anatomical Wax Museum, San Giacomo Maggiore, Oratorio
di Santa Cecilia, Castle of San Martino in Soverzano, Museo
Civico Medievale

1 1 December, Visiting Fellows' Seminar

Eric Gordon," Technical Investigation into the Walters' View of An
Ideal City"

Ana Carolina Hosne," The circulation of the art of memory through-
out the Jesuit missions in the late sixteenth century"
Victoria Kirkham, "An unpublished manuscript by Benedetto
Varchi"

Stephen Milner, "Palla Strozzi as civic orator"
13 December, Fellows' Seminar: Art, Architecture, & Patronage
Juliana Kang:" Drawings by Raphaelfrom ca. 15 00- 15 12 -.Patterns
and Intentions"

Emanuela Ferretti: "Cosimo I e il primo acquedotto di Firenze
rinascimentale"

Nadja Aksamija: "The Bolognese villa in the age of Cardinal
Gabriele Paleotti"

16 January, Evan MacCarthy and Nadja Aksamija, informal
talk on facsimiles (in conjunction with display in Berenson

Reading Room)

17 January, Fellows' Seminar: La letteratura e il mondo delle
Accademie

Laura Refe:" Poliziano e allievi: una scuola d'eccezione nell'Europa
umanistica"

Nicoletta Marcelli: "Attivita letteraria e impegno politico negli Orti
Oricellari"

Marco SgSLrbi:" Benedetto Varchi e la logica volgare del Cinquecento:
testi e contesti"

24 January, Fellows' Seminar: Education
Evan MacCarthy: "Music and Learning in Early Modern Italy"
Valentina Lepri: " Precepts for the political adviser: Machiavelli and
Guicciardini as aphorists"

Renee Raphael: "Reading Galileo: Philosophy and the New
Science in Counter-Reformation Italy"

28 January, Giornata della Memoria: Discussion about the role
of culture during the Holocaust

7 February, Fellows' Seminar

Marco Sgarbi, "Translatio studiorum e pensiero rinascimentale:
Progetto per una Encyclopedia of Renaissance Philosophy"
Chen Liu, "Botticelli's Wumei" — Fu Lei and the Reception of
Renaissance Art in 20th-century China"

15 February, Press Conference about Historic Recreation of
the Banishment and Arrest of Niccolo Machiavelli, in Palazzo
Vecchio, presentations by Stephen Milner and Nicoletta Marcelli
19 February, Historic Recreation of the Banishment and Arrest
of Niccolo Machiavelli, in the streets of Florence,
26 February, Visit to exhibition in Padua, "Pietro Bembo e
I'invenzione del Rinascimento," led by director of the exhibition,
Guido Beltramini (VIT'08)

2 March,Yiut to Cathedral Dome led by Margaret Haines
26 March, Visit to the Medici Villa of Poggio a Caiano led by
Emanuela Ferretti

24 April, Discussion about publishing articles in scholarly jour-
nals led by Nicholas Terpstra and Jonathan Nelson
12-13 April, Fellows' Siena Trip, led by Gabriele Fattorini and
Philippa Jackson: State Archive, Palazzo Pubblico, Campo and
Fonte Gaia, Baptistry, Crypt, Cathedral, Cathedral Museum,
Castello di Gallico, Pienza

1 7 April, Workshop led by Valentina Lepri and Laura Refe,
Teaching the Renaissance

29 April, Visit to exhibition at the Galleria degli Uffizi: "Norma
e capriccio: Spagnoli in Italia agli esordi della 'maniera moderna'" led
by co-curator Tommaso Mozzati (VITT2)

9 May, Informal talk by Paul Barolsky (VIT'81, '87, '91, '95,
'08): "Wlio was Raphael?"

5-7 June, Conference organized by Alina Payne and Lina
Bolzoni: "Revision, Revival and Return: The Italian Renaissance
in the Nineteenth Century"

13 June, Lecture by Lucia Battaglia Ricci: "Decameron visualiz-
zato: dallo scrittoio dell'autore alle botteghe degli artisti"
13 June, Concert: Early Music at I Tatti 'KXlVCanti di una
brigata fiorentina" , Ensemble Micrologus

Villa I Tatti

Bologna and its contado

In early December 2012, the VIT Fellows went on a two-day trip, organized by
Nadja Aksamija and Jessica Richardson, to Bologna and its contado. The first day,
spent in the city, included such highlights as the Santo Stefano complex, Niccolo
dell' Area's terracotta Lamentation group, the Archiginnasio with its anatomical theatre,
Ulisse Aldrovandi's natural history collection at Palazzo Poggi, and the Oratory of
Santa Cecilia and the Bentivoglio Chapel at San Giacomo Maggiore. Thanks to the
generosity of two local architectural historians, Prof. Francesco Ceccarelli and Arch.
Roberto Terra, we were given a very special tour of the basilica of San Petronio,
which included extended time on the scaffold (the facade is currently undergoing
a thorough cleaning and restoration), inches away from Jacopo della Quercia's portal reliefs and
statues. The restorers from the Opificio delle Pietre Dure shared with us some of the newest
cleaning and conservation techniques, and we also enjoyed breathtaking views over the Piazza
Maggiore and beyond. The evening featured a delightful dinner at the renowned Bolognese
trattoria "Da Leonida" and an after-party at the home of the musicologist Pedro Memelsdorff

(VIT'04).

The second day, after a brief stop at San
Domenico to see the magnificent Area, we ventured into the countryside to visit
the miniature Quattrocento castle of San Martino in Soverzano. As the snowflakes
fell gently over this magical place, we were given a warm welcome by the castle's
owner, Dott. Michelangelo Poletti, who introduced us to his wonderful collection
of Baroque paintings and treated us to a rich spread of Bolognese specialties and
champagne. After the party, we lent our muscle power and an endless supply
of good cheer to helping Dott. Poletti open an enormous crate with his newest
acquisition. Back in the city, we stopped at the new Museo della Storia di Bologna
at Palazzo PepoliVecchio to admire the flawless facsimile of the monumental 1575
fresco map of Bologna from the Vatican's inaccessible Sala Bologna, executed by

Factum Arte for the museum in 2011.

~ Nadja Aksamija
Robert Lehman Fellow

Nadja Aksamija.

T Appointees' Christmas party;
*~ The first day of the vendemmia
gets underway.

BOOKS BY FORMER
FELLOWS

The long list of recent publications
by former Fellows has found a new
home on our website at http://itat.ti.
harvard.edu/ content/books-former-
appointees. There you will be able to
search the list for a specific book or, with
the aid of serendipity, find just that book
you didn't realise had been written. You
can navigate to this and other fascinating
topics about the Biblioteca Berenson by
clicking on the main Library page of the
website and scrolling through the Library
News section. The books included in
this list are recent additions, whether
purchased by one of the endowed
book funds, from donations given
by the Friends of the Biblioteca Berenson,
or given directly.

Autumn 2013

Revision, Revival and Return:
The Italian Renaissance in the Nineteenth

Century

14

The conference Revision, Revival and ReturnThe Italian Renaissance in the
19th century, organized by Lina Bolzoni (Scuola Normale, Pisa) and Alina
Payne (Harvard), was held in June and included 22 papers from scholars across
disciplines, historical periods and geographies. Rather than a historiographical
conference, this event proposed to bring together scholars of the Renaissance
with scholars of the 19th century and foster a dialogue between those who

study the period itself with those who
study its reception and transformation
in the 19th century — to the benefit of
both fields. Further, the organizers sought
to bring an interdisciplinary perspective
to the theme — involving scholars of
literature, art history, architecture, history,
■ music, collecting and museums — so as to
^^^^^ foster an understanding of the dialogues
between various areas of culture and the
consequences of such dialogues. The
conference also proposed to look away from
period denominations and period styles —
Neoclassicism, Romanticism, Historicism
and so on.The attention was focused on the
Renaissance in the long 19th century and
this perspective was intended to cut across
9 stylistic periods, and allow a reassessment
of these artificial boundaries. Finally,
the conference proposed to look at
two divergent groups: ~~
the foreigners who lived
their myth of Italy and its
Renaissance, and the Italians
for whom the Renaissance
had a much more
complicated physiognomy
and who were conflicted
about many issues for
which it stood as perennial
reminder: the issue of unity versus the
independent city states, of Catholicism and
the papacy and its political role, the issue of
Italy and its greedy neighbors, etc. The two and a half
day conference held partly in Pisa at the Scuola Normale
and at ITatti drew a record crowd with attendees coming
especially from as far away as Denmark and the US, as well
as from Palermo, Rome and Turin. The conference will

leave a physical trace as the publication
of the essays arising from it is currently
underway.

~ Alina Payne
Robert Lehman Visiting Professsor

Villa I Tatti

1 1 Vicky Kirkham;
T Emanuela Fertetti.
-* The trip to the Uffizi afforded
a visit to the Boboli Gardens:
Andrew Bems.

Norma e Capriccio

On 29 April 2013, a group of
Fellows visited a fascinating
exhibition at the Galleria degli Uffizi,
Norma e capriccio, Spagnoli in Italia agli
esordi della "maniera moderna", led by the
curator Tommaso Mozzati (VIT'12).
Before entering the exhibition rooms,
Antonio Natali, director of the Galleria
degli Uffizi and co-curator of the
exhibition, gave a brief introduction.
The aim of the show was to highlight
and assess the works by Spanish artists,
notably those of Alonso Berruguete,
Pedro Machuca, Pedro Fernandez,
Bartolome Ordonez, Diego de Siloe,
who were active in Italy during the first
two decades of the sixteenth century.
Although they are not well known today,
the artists from the Iberian Peninsula
were highly receptive to the new ideas
and latest practices disseminating from
great artistic centers: Florence, Rome,
Naples, and Milan. The exhibited works
reflected their understanding of classical
antiquity, humanism, and above all, the
accomplishments of the famous Italian
artists such as Leonardo, Michelangelo,
Raphael, Filippino Lippi, Donatello,
Pontormo, Andrea del Sarto and Rosso
Fiorentino.

The exhibition was divided into

four sections and the works were
displayed in eight rooms. The first room
was devoted to Alonso Berruguete
whose paintings of the Madonna and
Child or the Holy Family reflected
how wide-ranging and thorough were
his observation of the Italian artists. At
the same time, his wooden polychrome

Jun Li & Juliana Kang.

statue of the Madonna showed a stunning
mixture of Italianate and Spanish flair. In
the subsequent rooms displayed works
by both Italian and Spanish artists, and
among them, Pedro Machuca, Pedro
Fernandez, Cesare da Sesto showed a
strong influence of Raphael and their
activities encompassing a wide radius in
promoting Raphael's style throughout

Italy from Lombardy to Campania. As
with sculptures, Diego de Siloe and
Bartolome Ordonez demonstrated
their virtuosity in handling marble and
their extraordinary ability to synthesize
images inspired from paintings and
frescoes to three-dimensional works.
The final section of the exhibition was
dedicated to the artists' works after their
return to Spain where they continued
to interweave Italian elements in their
creations.

Just as the contemporary Italian
artists who had grappled with the
demanding legacy and perfection
left by the great masters of the High
Renaissance, the Spanish artists came
to terms with their own understanding,
and the end products attested to varied
and eclectic interpretations, both
hauntingly beautiful and bizarre.

For more information about the
exhibition, Norma e capriccio, Spagnoli in
Italia agli esordi della "maniera moderna",
(5 March-26 May 2013), follow this
link to the museum website, http://
www.uffizi.org/ 1 1 20-norma-and-
capriccio-exhibit/.

~ ES Juliana Kang
Rush H Kress Fellow

15

Autumn 2013

16
so

A Japanese Spring

In all their international travels,
Bernard and Mary Berenson never
reached Japan, but in the second half of
May, and for the first time, representatives
from I Tatti arrived in the Land of the
Rising Sun. The director Lino Pertile,
together with Anna Bensted (Manager
of Community
Engagement) ,
Jonathan Nelson
(Assistant Director for
Academic Programs),
and Jonathan's wife
Silvia Catitti had an
exhilarating visit to
a country where the
appreciation of the
Italian Renaissance is
extensive and grow-
ing. Academic de-
partments and inde-
pendent centers for
Italian Studies have
existed in Japan for
over a half century,
but the scholars and
their research remain
little known in the
West. Moreover, few
scholars and institu-
tions in Japan have
had contact with
I Tatti.

A series of events were held in a
dozen different venues in Tokyo and
Kyoto. These allowed scholars and stu-
dents of all levels to hear and meet the
group from I Tatti.

Lino and Jonathan made several
presentations about the Harvard Center
and gave a total often lectures. They also
learned about some of the work being
carried out in Japan. At the University of
Tokyo, for example, Lino and Jonathan
met with professors and students in
the Departments of Art History and
of Italian. At the Renaissance Meeting
held at the Gakushuin Women's College
in Tokyo, where Lino gave an analysis of
the first canto of Dante's Divine Comedy,
one speaker presented a newly created
organization, the Japanese Association
for Renaissance Studies. This group

focuses on history, philosophy, and sci-
ence during 'Japan's Christian Century
(1550—1650)," whereas several other
institutions and departments concen-
trate on Italian language and literature.
Lino gave lectures, often in Italian,

about Dante

Jonathan Nelson, Lino Pertile, Wakaba
Yashiro & Toko Hirayama at the Museum
of Modern Art in Kamakura.
Lino Pertile, Koichi Toyama & Toko
Hirayama on the Tokyo subway.

at the Department of
Mediterranean Studies of
the University of Tokyo,
at the Centro Culturale
Italo-Giapponese
(Kyoto), and at the
Department of Italian
of the University of
Kyoto; about Boccaccio
and Machiavelli at
the Istituto Italiano di
Cultura (Tokyo); and
about Primo Levi.

The long lines out-
side the Raphael exhi-
bition at the National
Museum of Western Art
attest to the extraordi-
nary interest in Italian
Renaissance Art; indeed,
the next exhibition at
this institution focuses
on Michelangelo, and a
show about Leonardo
just opened at the civ-
ic museum nearby. At

Lino Pertile at the Graduate School of Human
Studies of the University of Kyoto.

the National Museum, and then for
the Harvard Club of Japan, Jonathan
presented an economic approach to
Raphael's patrons.

In a different vein, Bernard
Berenson's impact on the Japanese schol-
ar Yukio Yashiro provided the subject

of a lecture at Keio University. Here
Jonathan announced that I Tatti will be
collaborating with the Department of
Art Research, Archives and Information
Systems or Tobunken in Tokyo, an in-
stitution co-founded by Yashiro, on a
project to present the Berenson- Yashiro
correspondence online.

Yashiro 's letters are at I Tatti, while
Berenson's are now on deposit at the
Museum of Modern Art in Kamakura.

In the preface to the Japanese
edition of his Sketch for a Self Portrait,
BB wrote, "I can only hope that this
sketchy attempt at self-portraiture
makes soundings into the consciousness
where . . . well trained individuals from

"ITXW^-t— m

Dante, Ulisse e l'intelligenza

iSS Lino Pertile &g c—^F**)

every part of earth can meet as human-
ized being regardless of race, nationality,
and tradition." At I Tatti, Japanese schol-
ars can now exchange ideas with col-
leagues from Europe, North and South
America, Australia, and other parts of
Asia. The ties between I Tatti and Japan,
begun with Berenson and Yashiro, are
now stronger than ever.

~ Jonathan Nelson
Assistant Director for Academic
Programs and Publications

Villa I Tatti

Council Notes

It is with great sadness that we record
the death of one of our most dear
Council members, Gabriele Geier
who died in January (see page 24).
Although she had been unable to attend
Council meetings in recent years, long-
standing members recall her with great
affection. Gabriele's unflagging sup-
port for Villa I Tatti was exemplary; she
responded generously to any Council
initiative and also understood the need
for unrestricted giving. We have much
to thank her for including her down-
to-earth advice and delightful sense of
humor. Working with ITatti's directors
over many years, she and her husband,
Paul E. Geier, helped transform I Tatti
into the center of excellence it is today.

Last summer, Julie Tobey accept-
ed Lino Pertile's invitation to chair
the Amici dei Tatti, the friends who,
by addressing priority areas and annual
unrestricted giving, bring immediate
benefits to I Tatti and help reconcile
operating expenses not covered by
endowed funds. Julie has worked hard
in her first year to introduce I Tatti to
a wider audience of interested people
and we have high hopes for the Amici
in the future. Sylvia Scheuer retired
from the Council in March after serv-
ing since 2007 and wrote, "I am happy
to become un' Arnica and continue my
involvement withVIT albeit no longer
so closely. I have very much enjoyed
being an ambassador for such a won-
derful cultural institution, participating
where possible in London, New York,

the Council, we will begin to institute
staggered terms for present Council
members. The eventual goal is to have
all Council members hold three-year
terms with opportunity for a second
term. After six years, members will take
a one-year leave
with the possibil-
ity to return for
another one or two
terms. The Council
Chairman will hold
a five-year term.

The year
brimmed with ac-
tivities: in October,

Roberts once again welcomed every-
one to a delightful reception at their
home. We thank them wholeheartedly
for their generous hospitality.

In the ongoing effort to renew
and expand I Tatti 's support base special
events were held in Los
Angeles and Wilmington,
DE in addition to the
annual I Tatti Council
Spring Lecture in New
York City where Professor
Leonard Barkan (Princeton
University) intrigued and
enlightened us with his talk,
Some Pages from Michelangelo's
Life. Lino Pertile spoke about
I Tatti and Wliy the Renaissance

Susan Roberts & Lino Pertile;
Fred Koontz &Alexa Mason;
Lino & Anna with
JJ & Roberta Pellegrino.

Council members and Benefactors at-
tended the first annual Ottobre a I Tatti,
a three-day opportunity to meet the
Fellows and learn about I Tatti's pro-
grams at first hand (see page 19). In
February, Council members and close
friends enjoyed a private tour of Piero
della Francesca in America at the Frick
Collection with Nathanial Silver,
Curator, and Machtelt Israels (VIT'05)
on whose scholarly work Mr. Silver
created a conjectural reconstruction of
Piero della Francesca's altarpiece for
the church of Sant'Agostino. (See also
Walter Kaiser's review, "The Noble
Dreams of Piero," in the 21 March
2013 issue of The New York Review
of Books.) Afterwards, Tony and Susan

Still Matters at the beautiful Hollywood
home of Hil Omernik and Bob
Felner and at the Wilmington Club,
a handsome three-story brownstone,
hosted by Michael andTookie Clark and
sponsored by Legg Mason Investment
Counsel. We thank these devoted
friends for their enthusiasm and for
organizing such welcoming and affable
evenings and look forward to getting to
know a little better some of their many
interesting guests.

~ Graziella Macchetta
Development Associate

Treacy Beyer, Sydney Shuman,
Neil Rudenstine & Walter Kaiser.

Cambridge and of course Florence." We
thank her for her commitment and look
forward to seeing her at future events.
In our continuing efforts to structure

VILLA I TATTI COUNCIL

Lino Pertile, Director
Susan M. Roberts, Chairman
Julie Tobey, Chair, Amid dei Tatti

HO

Darcy Beyer

Treacy Beyer

Jean A. Bonna

Debby Brice

James R. Cherryjr.

Anne Coffin

Anthony M. Cummings

Robert F. Erburu
John Gilmore
William Hood
Walter Kaiser
Virgilia Pancoast Klein
Frederick S. Koontz
Mary Gibbons Landor
Guillaume Malle

Barnabas McHenry
Joseph P. Pellegrino, Jr.
Neil L. Rudenstine
Sydney R. Shuman
William F.Thompson
David Tobey
Angela Weisl

17

Autumn 2013

fh \h \b Amici dei Tatti/Friends of I Tatti

Last autumn, Julie Tobey and Susan
Mainwaring Roberts announced the formation
of the Amici dei Tatti. Through their friendship
for I Tatti, their love of the humanities and the
Renaissance, and their trust in Harvard, the Amici
dei Tatti are already making their mark on the
life of the Villa. The Amici sustain the fellowship
program, support the Berenson Library, and help
maintain the Center's landmark buildings and
property. Amici enjoy becoming members of the
larger I Tatti community and are kept in touch
with events in Florence and elsewhere through the
I Tatti newsletter and quarterly electronic bulletins.
Everyone who donates $500 or more each year
becomes a Friend oflTatti and those who can give
more generously
are also invited to
events in Florence,
New York, or other
locations such as the
Ottobre a I Tatti
weekend. Please
do give serious
consideration to
joining our new
Amici' .

T Max Marmot &
Maggie Astrup;

<- Walter & Ursula
Cliff;

-* Catherine Damson
with Anna Bensted.

Our Supporters

We are deeply grateful to the following individuals, foundations, and cor-
porations whose generous contributions have helped us to bridge the gap
between endowment income and operating expenses in the 2012/2013
financial year:

I Tatti Benefactors:

Gabriele Geier
The Getty Foundation
Rachel Jacoff
Arthur L. Loeb

I Tatti Patrons:

Anonymous in honor
of Melvin R. Seiden &

Donald Campbell
Frank A. Campini

Foundation
James Cherry, Jr.
The Florence Gould

Foundation
Samuel H. Kress Foundation
Billy Rose Foundation

I Tatti Supporters:

American Friends of the

Shanghai Museum
J.Treacy & Darcy Beyer
Deborah Loeb Brice
David Scott Gibbons
Marc Haas Foundation
Walter C. & Virgilia P. Klein
Frederick S. Koontz
Mary Gibbons Landor
Robert Lehman Foundation
Guillaume & Christina Malle
Fabrizio Moretti
Joseph P. & Roberta

Pellegrino
Susan M. &

Anthony W Roberts
Sydney R. &

Stanley S. Shuman
David M. & Julie P Tobey

Amici Benefactors:

Victor K.Atkins, Jr.
Susan K. Feagin
Bruce & Peggy Mainwaring
Terence & Suzanne Murray
Fund

Amici Patrons:

Anonymous
JohnT. Beatyjr.
Charlotte Fitzpatrick Brown
Neilma B. Gantner
John A. D. Gilmore
Harvey Mansfield
Neil L. & Angelica Z.
Rudenstine

Amici Supporters:

Charlotte P.Armstrong
Philippa Calnan
Robert J. & Nancy Carney
David Carrozzino
D. Ronald Daniel &

Lise Scott
Catherine B. Freedberg
Herbert & Sarah M. Gibor

Charitable Foundation
Thomas N. Gilmore
James R. &

Maisie K. Houghton
Walter J. Kaiser
George Labalme,Jr.
Juliet H. Marillonnet

McHenry Memorial Trust
Abby & George O'Neill
Trust

John W. & Jane C. Payne
Frances B. Perry
Francis & Amy Poggi
Sylvia Scheuer
Morton I. &

Estelle G. Sosland
William F &

Juliana W Thompson
Archie D. & Bertha H.

Walker Foundation
Katharine Watson

Amici dei Tatti:

Louis J. &

Josephine D. Appell
Charles Brickbauer
Beverly L. Brown
Joseph J. Connors
Richard A. Goldthwaite
Bruce C. Horten
Suzanne Solov Labiner
Regina A. Lee
Miller-Mellor Association
Robert D. Mowry
Andrea Rizzi
Marc Tessier-Lavigne &

Mary Hynes
Lee H.Wagman
Nehama Jacobs
Malcolm Hewitt Wiener

OS

Amici dei Tatti / Friends of I Tatti
Levels of Giving

SO

$500 to $999
$1000 to $2,499
$2,500 to $4,999
$5,000 to $9,999
$5,000 to $9,999

$10,000 to $24,999
$25,000 to $99,999
$100,000

Annual
Annual
Annual
Annual

Annual, pledged

Amici dei Tatti
Amici Supporters
Amici Patrons
Amici Benefactors
Amici Founders' Circle

for each of three years

I Tatti Supporters

I Tatti Patrons

I Tatti Benefactors

Villa I Tatti

Ottobre a I Tatti

Members of the I Tatti Council and Amici Benefactors
came to Florence last October for a long weekend rilled
with ample opportunity to see at first hand what's going on at
the Harvard Center and some of the jewels that make the city
so unique. Our guests included Council chair Susan Roberts
and her husband Tony, Debby & James Brice, as well as trustees

'i ■ ^I^HE?W9Eil "' tnc Florence

Strfv v $■ Gould Foundation
and Samuel H.
Kress Foundation
among others. The
occasion got off to a
magnificent start with
a lively concert in
the Myron & Sheila
Gilmore Limonaia
(see page 12). Poems
by the legendary figure of
the Mexican Baroque, Sor
Juana Ines de la Cruz (1648-
1695), were set to music and
performed by Constantinople,
a Canadian ensemble with
roots in Iran. The following
day, three of this year's Fellows
— Andrew Berns, Giancarlo
Casale and Chen Liu —
enthusiastically described
and discussed their projects
with our Amici and Council
Members in the Florence Gould Hall, before the whole
community got together for lunch. That afternoon, Michael
Rocke, Nicky Mariano Librarian, introduced his colleagues
and a number of current projects in the Biblioteca Berenson
including the digitization project of photographs
of "homeless" works of art, the online catalogue of
the Berenson Art Collection in memory of Melvin
R. Seiden, and the 'Edith Wharton' and 'Berenson

at Harvard' exhibitions. The next day the beautiful autumnal
weather invited us outdoors to view the I Tatti property and
enjoy the fruits of the season with a picnic at Corbignano. Other
highlights of the three days included a visit to the Opera del
Duomo with director Mons. Timothy Verdon (VIT'87) to view
Ghiberti's resplendently restored Gates of Paradise as well as to
the Opificio delle Pietre Dure conservation laboratory where
Cecilia Frosinini and Roberto
Belucci introduced us to
Leonardo's Adoration of the Magi

19

— and its many wonders made
visible under restoration. This
year's Ottobre a I Tatti weekend
for the Amici Founders' Circle and
Council members will be October
17, 18 and 19, 2013.

Autumn 2013

Publications

Selected Recent Publications

A complete list of all I Tatti publications can be found on our website

with support from the Lila Wallace — Reader's Digest Endowment Fund, the Scholarly Programs & Publications Funds in the names of
Malcolm Hewitt Wiener, Craig and Barbara Smyth, Jean-Francois Malle, The Andrew W Mellon Foundation,
the Robert Lehman Foundation, & the Myron and Sheila Gilmore Publication Fund.

The I Tatti Renaissance Library

Paolo Giovio, Notable Men and Women of Our Time, ed.
and trans. Kenneth Gouwens (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 2013). Paolo Giovio's dialogue provides an informed
perspective on the sack of Rome in 1527, from a friend of
Pope Clement VII. The work discusses literary style and
whether the vernacular could surpass Latin as a vehicle for
literary expression.

20 I Tatti Studies in Italian Renaissance History

SO Nicholas Baker (VIT'14) The Fruit of Liberty: Political

Culture in the Florentine Renaissance, 1480-1550 (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 2013). How does a republic become
a monarchy? How do self-governing citizens become sub-
jects and courtiers? The Fruit of Liberty examines the long,
slow cultural transformation of the Florentine office-holding
class that accompanied the institutional shift from republic
to Medici principality in the first half of the sixteenth cen-
tury. In contrast to most of the scholarship on this period,
it does not see the crucial years of 1530-1532 as either an
endpoint or a beginning but

as a moment of transition
marked by striking cultural
continuities. The language
and images of republican
liberty, reconceptualized in
new ways, aided the change
in status from citizen to sub-
ject. Using a wide variety
of sources including private
letters, diaries, and art works as well as the more traditional
sources of political history, The Fruit of Liberty examines how
this reconceptualization occurred and argues that the creation
of Medici principality did not occur via a radical break with
the past but with adoption and adaptation of the political cul-
ture of Renaissance republicanism.

Emily Michelson (VIT'14) The Pulpit and the Press in
Reformation Italy (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013).
Italian preachers during the Reformation era found them-
selves in the trenches of a more desperate war than anything
they had ever imagined. This war — the splintering of western
Christendom into conflicting sects — was physically but also
spiritually violent. In an era of tremendous religious convolu-
tion, fluidity, and danger, preachers of all kinds spoke from
the pulpit daily, weekly, or seasonally to confront the hottest
controversies of their time. Preachers also turned to the print-
ing press in unprecedented numbers to spread their messages.
Emily Michelson challenges the stereotype that Protestants
succeeded in converting Catholics through superior preaching
and printing. Catholic preachers were not simply reactionary
and uncreative mouthpieces of a monolithic church. Rather,

they deftly and imaginatively grappled with the question of
how to preserve the orthodoxy of their flock and maintain
the authority of the Roman church while also confronting
new, undeniable lay demands for inclusion and participation.
These sermons — almost unknown in English until now — tell
a new story of the Reformation that credits preachers with
keeping Italy Catholic when the region's religious future
seemed uncertain, and with fashioning the post-Reformation
Catholicism that thrived into the modern era. By deploying
the pulpit, pen, and printing press, preachers in Italy created a
new religious culture that would survive in an unprecedented
atmosphere of competition and religious choice.

The Villa I Tatti Series

Renaissance Studies in Honor of Joseph
Connors,Voh 1 & 2, eds. Machtelt Israels
(VIT'05) & Louis A.Waldman (VIT'06)
(Florence: Villa I Tatti, 2013). The two
richly illustrated volumes demonstrate
Villa I Tatti's role as the world's leading
center for Italian Renaissance studies.
Gathered to honor I Tatti's director from
2002 to 2010, the 177 essays represent
the cutting edge of Renaissance schol-
Joseph Connors. arshl P 111 art hlstor y> literature,

<- Nic Baker & Emily Michelson. music, and more.

I Tatti Studies

Volume 14-15 (Florence: Leo S. Olschki, 2013) with
articles by Martin Stefanik (VIT'08) on "The Italian
Involvement in Metal Mining in the central Slovakian
Region"; Margaret Haines (VIT'76, '88-'14) on "Myth and
Management in the Construction of Brunelleschi's Cupola";
Patricia Simons on "Portraits for the Tornabuoni family by
Ghirlandaio and Botticelli"; Linda Pellecchia (VIT'95) on
"Giuliano da Sangallo's Staircase in the Gondi Palace in
Florence"; Alana O'Brien on "Apostles in the Oratory of the
Compagnia dello Scalzo"; Olivier Rouchon on "Scrittoio,
tesoro, archivio: le due Come Ier et le secret des ecritures";
and Carmen Donia on "Ut pictura lingua": Ecfrasi e memoria
nelle pagine diVincenzio Borghini.

Many thanks to Caroline Flam for her distinguished service as General
Editor of I Tatti Studies. Caroline's many
years of scholarly care and leadership have
brought ITS to the exemplary standards for
which it is now well known in the field. Jane
Tylus (NYU) is the new General Editor
of our journal, now called I Tatti Studies
in the Italian Renaissance, which will
henceforth be published twice annually.

Villa I Tatti

Machiavelli in Florence and ... CHINA!

❖

❖

❖

Ongoing celebrations to mark
the 500th anniversary of the
publication of Niccolo Machiavelli's
II Principe (1513) included a two-day
conference, "Machiavelli and Modern
Politics: A Quincentenary Celebration,"
which took place in late May at
Tianjin Normal University College
of Politics and Administration. Valdo
Spini (President of the Machiavelli
Committee, Florence) was among the
guests of honor and I Tatti Italianisti
were present in force.

According to the multiple
standpoints offered by the scholars,
the resulting picture of Machiavelli
was reshaped and enriched at the
same time. The conference opened
with the keynote lecture by James
Hankins (VIT'89,'93,'07) entitled
Machiavelli and the Humanist Politics of
Virtue, followed by a session predictably
devoted to politics and history: among
the participants were Mark Jurdjevic

(VIT'08), Writing History in a Ruined
World: Machiavelli, Guicciardini, and
Vettori on History and Republicanism and
Peter Stacey (VIT'08), Free and Unfree
States in Machiavelli's Political Philosophy.
Another group of papers focused on
literature and rhetoric as well as the
history of printing in relationship
with Machiavelli's Prince, among
them Stephen Milner (VIT'00,T3),
The Politics of Advice: Addressing Princes,
Nicoletta Marcelli (VITT3), Machiavelli
as a Poet: Before and After the Prince, and
Valentina Lepri (VITT3), Publishing
Machiavelli in the XVIth Century: Behind
the Scenes.

Marco Polo's travels to China at
the end of the 13th century increased
the western world's knowledge of
that ancient culture. Now, thanks to
Professor Liu Zunlian who organized
this international conference, insights
into the western world in the early
years of the 16th century were shared

21

Nicoletta Marcelli & Valentina Lepri in Tianjin.

among scholars of both worlds. And we
came back to I Tatti with a much better
understanding of modern day China
after our fascinating visit.

~ Nicoletta Marcelli
Andrew W Mellon Fellow

Stephen Milner's research into Florence's town criers sparked the idea for
the historical re-enactment by the City Government of Florence of an
event on 19 February that took place exactly 500 years earlier: a Town
Crier, on horseback, ;
replete with uniform
and trumpet, pro-
nounced at the
main sites in the
city center an official
proclamation calling
for information about
the whereabouts of
Niccolo Machiavelli 1
as a prelude to
his arrest and I
banishment.

Valdo Spini, Lino Pertile, Antonella Chid
& Carlo Francini from the Comune di
Firenze, Stephen Milner & Nicoletta Marcelli.
Stephen Milner.

Autumn 2013

CHINESE SUMMER SEMINAR

22
SO

For three weeks in July, eighteen Chinese scholars from
across mainland China and Taiwan participated in a
unique three-week seminar in Florence: "The Unity of the
Arts in Renaissance Italy," funded by the Getty Foundation
as part of the Connecting Art Histories initiative. The semi-
nar, co-directed by Jonathan Nelson and Chen Liu (VITT2),
with Francesca Borgo (VITT4) as academic assistant, was de-
signed for historians of art or architecture who teach Western
culture in China. Many have had limited or even no occasion
to exchange ideas with each other, or with Western scholars.
The theme springs from a view expressed in Giorgio Vasari's
Lives of the Artists: disegno, i.e. design and drawing, unites and
underlies all the arts.

Over the course of the seminar, the group studied art
works and architectural monuments with great enthusiasm.
They spent hours at CasaVasari commenting on the sophis-
ticated iconography of its frescos, and were amazed by the
exquisite drawings by Renaissance masters seen during private
visits to the Casa Buonarroti and Uffizi. Lectures on site were
given by the co-directors and other former Fellows, including
Nadja Aksamija (VITT3), Gerardo De Simone (VITT1), Al-
len Gneco (VIT'89-T 4), Margaret Haines (VIT76, '88-T4),
Marcella Marongiu (VITT1), and Cara Rachele (VITT1).
The Chinese scholars also made friends with directors and
colleagues at the Kunsthistoriches Institut in Florenz and the
International Studies Institute at Palazzo Rucellai. They fur-
ther developed their understanding of the unity of the arts
through inspiring lectures at I Tatti given by Michael Cole

(VIT'07), Alina Payne (VIT'05,T3), and Lino Pertile. Such
was the impact of Lino's lecture about the Commedia that Qi
Chen, a literature scholar who recently completed her Doc-
toral thesis on Renaissance physiognomy, decided to focus
her future intellectual pursuits upon Dante. All participants
conveyed their questions and observations with passion, and
exchanged ideas on Renaissance teaching and research meth-
odologies with American and European colleagues. A conviv-
ial air was felt throughout the seminar. Almost every Chinese
scholar expressed the sentiment that the three weeks in Flor-
ence would leave them with a life-enhancing memory.

~ Chen Liu
Mellon Visiting Fellow

Villa I Tatti

Off to Siena & Pienzal

Gabriele Fattorini has something to say.
Looking out onto Piazza del Campo.

In April 2013 a large group ofTattiani, including the director Lino Pertile and
his wife Anna and led by Gabriele Fattorini (VIT'13) and Philippa Jackson,
(VIT'13) visited Siena and Pienza. The tour aimed to show Fellows not only
the highlights of Sienese art, such as Simone Martini's Maesta in the Palazzo
Pubblico and Ambrogio Lorenzetti's Good and Bad Government, but to give

a wide overview of the city's
history and its culture, its artistic
themes and styles over many
centuries. The visit began in
the Archivio di Stato di Siena which
houses over 13km of documents and
a museum containing a type of art,
the 'Biccherne' which are unique to
the city. As described by William
Heywood, these small wooden
panels, originally bookcovers of
government registers (the earliest
dating to 1258 and the latest to the
eighteenth century) constitute a
pictorial chronicle of the city. The
morning continued by concentrating
on civic art in the Palazzo Pubblico,
including works by Taddeo di Bartolo
and Domenico Beccafumi, the finest
painter of sixteenth-century Siena.
The afternoon was devoted to the
religious center of the city, the
cathedral, its baptistry and its recently
discovered 'crypt' with scenes of the
life of Christ which predate Duccio.
The baptistry font, with sculptures by
Donatello, Ghiberti, Iacopo della Quercia and Giovanni di Turino, was examined
closely and later Marilena Caciorgna guided the group around the cathedral
concentrating in particular on its magnificent marble pavement. The Piccolomini
library containing Pintoricchio's frescos was a highlight of the visit with further
explanation from Juliana Kang on Raphael's involvement in the project. Daniel Zolli
commented on Donatello 's bronze Saint John the Baptist, and further sculpture was
examined when Mauro Minardi discussed the pulpit of Pisano. The day finished
with a visit to the Museo dell'Opera in which Duccio's Maesta was a particular
focus of attention and there was a chance to enjoy a panoramic view of the city.
The following day theTattiani were particularly fortunate to visit one of the leading
collections of early Sienese art at the castle
of Gallico, encompassing painting, sculpture
and ceramics. The trip ended with a visit to
Pienza, the small Renaissance city founded
by the humanist pope Pius II (1458-
1464) where we enjoyed the beauty of
the countryside of theVal d'Orcia and saw
the cathedral, Piccolomini Palace and art
collection of the Pienza Museum.

~ Philippa Jackson
Deborah Loeb Brice Fellow

23

Top to bottom: Adam Jaskienski; Eric Gordon;

Ana Carolina Hosne; Mauro Minardi;
Monica Preti-Hamard; Christopher Brown &
Min-Ling Tsai; Daniel Zolli; Renee Raphael
& Gabriela; & Jessica Richardson.
*~ Philippa Jackson, Laura Refe
& Chen Liu.

Autumn 2013

IN MEMORIAM

I Tatti records with sorrow the following deaths:

Nancy Dersofi (VIT'77), professor
of italian literature and compara-
tive literature for 34 years at Bryn Mawr
College, died on 27 October 2012 of
pancreatic cancer age 76. Educated
at Radcliffe (AB 1957, AM 1959) and
Harvard University (PhD 1966), she
was a gifted teacher whose scholar-
24 ship focused on the early sixteenth

SO century plays of Angelo Beolco, called

Ruzante. During her I Tatti fellowship
Dersofi looked at "the country villa and
Renaissance theatre in the Veneto" — in
particular the estates of Alvise Cornaro,
Ruzante's patron — in relation to
Ruzante's songs and plays. Her trans-
lation of U Anconitana: The Woman from
Ancona became the authoritative ver-
sion of one of the more controversial of
his plays. A lover of language and mu-
sic, her last scholarly papers, on Verdi's
"Simon Boccanegra," were given at the
Los Angeles Opera Company not long
before she died.

Malcolm Campbell (VIT'67,'72,
'82), professor of art history, died
at home in Portland, ME, on 27 January
2013 at the age of 78. Educated at
Princeton University (BA 1956, MFA
1959, and PhD 1962), he spent his en-
tire academic career at the University
of Pennsylvania retiring as the Class
of 1965 Professor. His research cen-
tered on Renaissance and Baroque art
and architecture in Tuscany and Rome
and in particular Medici art patronage
during the ducal and grand ducal eras,
on which he worked during his three
I Tatti appointments. Malcolm's many
publications include his definitive Pietro
da Cortona at the Pitti Palace (Princeton:
Princeton Univ. Press, 1977).

Angiolino Papi, retired farmer, died
on 29 May 2013, after a long illness.
Angiolino first came to work the land at
I Tatti in 1953 and was soon followed by
his parents, three brothers, sister, sisters-
in-law and their children — a family

of 14 in all.
When the first
tractor was
purchased,
Angiolino
became the
tractor driver,
continuing in
that capacity
until his retirement in January 2001.
He and his brothers dug by hand the
land for I Tatti's first vineyard, made
the wine — for many years treading the
grapes underfoot — took care of the
olive trees and olive crop, and grew
wheat and alfalfa. He worked long
hours, including at night during the
olive harvest when I Tatti's olives were
sometimes pressed in the small hours.
In 2002, he wrote: "Questo e stato il
mio lavoro, la mia passione anche se
ho dovuto lavorare tanto, non solo di
giorno ma anche di notte. Potrei dire
non e stato solo il mio lavoro, ma credo
la mia vita. Se potesse tornare indietro,
rifarei tutto con lo stesso impegno."

Gabriele Geier, long-standing and
beloved member of the I Tatti
family, died 6 January 2013 at the age of
94. Paul (AB'36, LLB'39) and Gabriele
Geier were frequent visitors to I Tatti
from the 1950s, knew and admired
Bernard Berenson and welcomed with
enthusiasm the transformation of the
Villa into a research institute in 1961
when they began to support the Harvard
Center and started their close friend-
ships with the succession of I Tatti's di-
rectors and
many of the
staff. Paul
Geier was
a founding
member of
the I Tatti
Council in
1979. After
Barbara Smyth &
Gabriele Geier.

his death in late 1981, Gabriele suc-
ceeded him on the Council. Her gen-
erosity and love of learning ensure that
scholars of the Italian Renaissance from
all over the world have the opportunity
to develop their interests and talents at
Villa I Tatti. In 1985, Gabriele cut the
ribbon on the Paul E. Geier Memorial
Library. Two years later, she made it pos-
sible for the upstairs of I Tatti's old barn
to be transformed into a common room.
Her extraordinary support endowed the
Nicky Mariano Librarianship, the Paul
E. Geier Directorship and a study in the
Deborah Loeb Brice Loggiato in mem-
ory of her friend Richard Krautheimer,
in addition to funds in the library, for
general maintenance and unrestricted
expenses. In more recent years Gabriele

— an elegant woman of great culture
and intellectual curiosity, warm, kind
and with a delightful sense of humor

— moved from her apartment in Rome
back to Germany. We will forever re-
main grateful for all that she has done to
strengthen and support our scholars and
the facilities that make their intellectual
pursuits so successful.

Piero Morselli (VIT'8i), art his-
torian and antiquarian, died in
Florida on 4 June 2013 at 71. Born
in Florence, he moved to Florida in
1967 where he attended Stetson and
Florida State Universities. After earn-
ing his PhD. from the University of
Pittsburgh, he was an Assistant Professor
at University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign. He held a Leopold Schepp
Fellowship at I Tatti in 1981/82 when
he worked on the construction and
decoration of Santa Maria del Carceri
at Prato on which he published exten-
sively. He stayed on as a half-time editor
for RILA, based at I Tatti, from October
1983 to 1987, as well as professor at
Syracuse University in Florence and
Bryn Mawr-University of Pennsylvania
Italian Summer Program. With Andrew
Morrogh (VIT'78), Fiorella Superbi
Gioffredi and Eve Borsook (VIT'82-
T4), he was a joint- organizer and edi-
tor of Renaissance Studies in Honor of
Craig Hugh Smyth (Florence: Giunti
Barbera, 1985).

Villa I Tatti

2s Gardens & Grounds

WITH SUPPORT FROM THE LlLA ACHESON WALLACE - READER'S DIGEST ENDOWMENT FUND.

Gate Number 30

In times past, visitors coming to
I Tatti on foot would enter the
property at #30 via diVincigliata and
walk up the cypress allee to the villa.
This entrance and the small gatehouse
next to it were the first two items
designed by Cecil Pinsent when he
was hired by the Berensons. Permits
to build this little house and adjacent
gate were issued by the authorities
in Fiesole on 16 August, 1909. A
little more than a year later, on 24
September 1910, the authorities issued
a second permit, this time with regard
to just the entrance. Had Pinsent and
the Berensons decided on a somewhat
grander entrance in the meantime?
No written testimony, drawings, or
photographs have survived, however,
so we can only guess. What is certain
is that the simple iron gate came to
hide a rather elaborate entrance both
in terms of the "alcove" ending in a
double set of curved stairs that lead up
to the cypress allee and in terms of the
sgraffito decoration on its walls.

This part of the garden is one of
only two features never restored in
the 100-odd years since it was first
built. Slowly it became a dark and
overgrown area only used by those
pedestrians avoiding the fraught
walk up via di Vincigliata. Despite
its limited use, the entrance clearly
impressed some visitors and was even
described in a garden guide to Italy
published in 1928:"At the entrance to
the long grass walk... there are some
stuccoed walls ornamented with
designs scratched upon the surface
before the cement was dry. This
method of wall decoration has been
commonly used for centuries in this
part of Tuscany.

In summer 2012 work began on
a major restoration of this potentially
beautiful feature of the garden. A
photographic campaign was carried
out to document its exact state of

preservation and, fortunately, it was
still possible to reconstruct the missing
decoration by extrapolating from the
surviving pieces. Permits from the
Soprintendenza alle Belle Arti were
applied for and eventually received.
Tracings of the sgraffiti were made
on transparent film. Specialists were
hired and finally the restoration took
shape.

A somewhat curious problem,
emblematic of the things that can
come up in the course of restorations,
cropped up when it came to dealing
with the laurel wreath encircling the
name of "Villa I Tatti" placed centrally
at the top of the first ramp of stairs.
For some reason the two capital A's in
this inscription were not done in the
usual way but rather made to look like
capital Greek deltas. In an institution
like ours this was immediately noticed
and the possibility of correcting them
was briefly floated. In the past several
other "errors" in the garden were not
corrected and later explained. In any
case, the photographic evidence of this
odd way of drawing the A's was clear.
Furthermore, Mr. Berenson must have
seen it himself in his walks through the
garden, and ultimately, we decided to
leave the inscription exactly how we
found it thanks to a tracing done on
a transparent film. However, to satisfy
a natural curiosity, a little research
was undertaken to see whether that
kind of lettering might have been
fashionable at the time. Were there
any contemporary examples? The
search finally lead to futurist-inspired
advertisements and the lettering they
used in the 1920s and early 30's.
Amongst the many examples, the most
amusing was the well-known one by
Nikolay Diulgheroff for a drink that
was making a name for itself in those
years, Campari.

~ Allen Grieco
Lila Acheson Wallace Assistant
Director: Gardens and Grounds
& Scholarly Programs

Autumn 2013

STAFF NOTES

l Paolo Gasparrt, Fahio Innocenti, Claudia Bresci,

Andrea Bendoni & Gianluca Rossi;
~~* Elena Stolfi & Manuela Michelloni;
^ Scott Palmer.

There were new faces in the fi-
nancial administration this year.
Simonetta Pinto went on early ma-
ternity leave in April 2012 and gave
birth to Lisa in November. While she
was away, Fabio Fadda took over her
responsibilities for basic accounting,
26 payments and invoices. His contract

SO terminated at the end of August and

we take this opportunity to thank him
for helping to keep I Tatti's finances

on track
and
for his
cheerful

Fabio Fadda, Jim Hankins
& Giulio Fertile.

demeanor and friend-
ly attitude. In January,
Antonella Fondelli
joined the group on a half-time basis
to work on the farm finances, a sec-
tor she has experience with in her
previous job with the Marchesi de'
Frescobaldi vineyard. We are happy
to announce that Jonathan Nelson's
appointment as Assistant Director for
Academic Programs and Publications
has been extended to July 2016.

Leonardo Rossi, one of the four farm
workers, retired at the end of 2012
after working
steadily for I Tatti
since September
1997. He has
been replaced by
Fabio Innocenti
who was already
standing in for
Leonardo dur-
ing the months

in which he underwent heart surgery.
We are sorry to see Leonardo go but
are very happy that he is now in ex-
cellent health. Fabio Innocenti has
now been hired full time and contin-
ues the long line of Papi family mem-
bers taking care of the I Tatti prop-
erty. His grand-father, Alfredo Papi,
great uncles
Angiolino
(see page 22)
and Olivo,
and great-
grandfather
Luigi all
worked the
I Tatti land
for decades.

Two
members of
the house staff on temporary con-
tracts were taken on permanently this
year. We are delighted that Sviatlana
Kandratovich and Ghazia Passaro
will be staying on with us.

Angela Dressen, Andrew W. Mellon
Librarian, won an Eleanor M. Garvey
Fellowship in Printing and Graphic
Arts from Houghton Library last
spring to spend a month at Harvard
working on her project The stones of
the wise — the marble pavement in Siena
Cathedral between Neoplatonism and
Apologetics. She was also a co-or-
ganizer of the conference The Badia
Fiesolana: Augustinian and Academic lo-
cus amoenus in the Florentine Hills which
was held at the Biblioteca Laurenziana
in May. Other Tattiani involved in
the conference were Peter Howard
(VIT'01,'08), Laura Refe (VTTT3),

and Mauro Mussolm (VIT'03).

For other news about com-
ings and goings in the library -
concerning Elena Stolfi, Sanne
Wellen, Alexandra Provo, Spyros
Koulouris, Manuela Michelloni,
Scott Palmer,
L u k a s
Klic, Paris
O'Donnell,
and Jocelyn
Karlan - please
see Michael
Rocke's report
on page 6.

The cor-
ridors and halls
of I Tatti have
resounded to
some younger
than usual foot-
steps this year with several under-
graduate interns in addition to the
Syracuse University students who
worked with Giovanni Pagliarulo in
the Fototeca (seepage 7). From March
to May, Kaori Freda, in Florence at-
tending the Sarah Lawrence Study
Abroad Program, though an under-
graduate at Reed College, helped
Anna Bensted with transcriptions on
the Oral History Project which will
soon become available on our website.
In June and July, we were delighted
to welcome three Harvard under-
graduates: Dominic Ferrante (Class

of 2015), con-

centrating in
History and
Literature in
Early Modern
Europe, was
an intern in
summer 2012
and returned
as a student

Rebecca Frankel &
Amanda Rodrigues.

Villa I Tatti

VILLA I TATTI COMMUNITY

Rossend Arques, Nicholas Baker, Davide Baldi, Karen-edis
Barzman, Ingrid Baumgartner, Katherine Bentz, Robert
Black, Francesca Borgo, Eve Borsook, Elena Calvillo, Angela
Matilde Capodivacca, Angelo Cattaneo, Roger Crum,
Vanessa de Cruz Medina, Maria De Prano, Guy Geltner,
Raul Gonzalez Arevalo, Gerard Gonzales Germain, Allen
Grieco, Margaret Haines, John Henderson, Tamar Herzig, Arni
Ingolfsson, Elizabeth Kassler-Taub, Noriko Kotani, Elizabeth

Lagresa, Giordano Mastrocola, Emily Michelson, Cecilia Muratori, Morgan Ng, Stephen
Orgel, Eugenio Refini, Michael Rocke, Neslihan Senocak, Daniel Stein Kokin, Miriam
Szocs, Miguel Tain Guzman, Koichi Toyama, CarlVillis, Gur Zak.

Full information about the 2012-2013 Fellows, Visiting Professors etc. can be found under Community / Current Appointees
on our website (www.itatti.harvard.edu). Click on their names and you will find a brief biography, the fellowship held, and
the name and summary of the project that brings these scholars to ITatti. We are working on a fully interactive and searchable

Andrew Berns, Juliana Kang &
Giancarlo Casale singing Christmas carols.

database of former Fellows

employee in the library
this year. Rebecca
Frankel (Class of 2015)
is studying classics, is a
Research Assistant for
the I Tatti Renaissance
Library series, and spent
the summer identify-
ing microfilms with
Ilaria Delia Monica in
the Archive. Amanda
Rodrigues (Class of
2014), who is studying
English and Government,

too which should arrive on the website in the next few months.

worked with Jonathan
Nelson on online publica-
tions and established a blog
for Harvard students at
I Tatti. You can read about
their youthful enthusiasm
on their summer blog at
http : / / villaitattiintern.
wordpress.com/

And finally, I take this
opportunity to inform ev-
eryone that after 32 very
happy years with I Tatti,
the time has come for me

to start a new chapter in my life. As
of October 1st, I will be the Executive
Director for the Bert & KuggieVallee
Foundation, a small science founda-
tion based in Boston. (I shall also be
the tea lady - it's a very small foun-
dation!) While _
I'm excited on I
the one hand by I
this new oppor-
tunity I am, on
the other, very
sad to be leaving
so many friends
here. I Tatti
has been an ex-
traordinary place to work, to grow,
and to learn, and the ties I have
made are very strong and dear to
me. As every former Fellow knows,
however, it's impossible to break the
umbilical cord entirely - and, in any
case, I don't really want to! I know
—— that my friendships will travel with
| me to my next adventure and I look
_jjL forward to seeing you all again at
I another time.

~ Alexa Mason
Assistant Director for
External Relations

27

Autumn 2013

I Tatti Newsletter
Harvard University
124 Mt. Auburn Street
Cambridge, MA 02138-5762

Non-Profit
U.S. Postage

PAID
Boston, MA
Permit No. 1636

The I Tatti newsletter is published once a year. Alexa M. Mason, editor & writer; Susan Bates, design & layout; Word Tech, printing &
distribution. Photographs are by Silvia Catitti, Eric Gordon, Laura Refe, Jessica Richardson, Gianni Trambusti, or
Alexa Mason, who apologizes to anyone whose photo she has used and whom she has not acknowledged.
Former Fellows are indicated in the text with the initials "VTT" after their name followed by the year(s) of their appointment as Fellow,
Visiting Fellow or Professor, or Research Associate. Many thanks to all who have contributed.